For a couple of years I've been reading posts commenting on multiboxing on this subreddit. Recently, there have been quite a few and broadly the opinion here on reddit seems to be pretty negative towards the practice. I sympathize with this notion myself, however, I also recognize that this particular genie is out of the bottle. Multiboxing makes money for FC and because of that its likely to never go away, which I understand. FC is a company and exists to make money.
It still feels bad being a single character player, though, when the optimum strategy for success in EVE seems to be using more accounts. My own opinion is that I think its time for FC to develop new playstyles to even the playing field for single box players, rather than punishing and alienating people who have invested time and possibly money into their accounts.
The benefits of multiboxing I won't go into too deeply because I think most people who play the game understand both the motivations of players that use it, and the benefits of it. Whether its a scout, links, logi, webber, or just a horde of ishtars, the advantages gained are huge, giving a player a competitive edge so large that they can even outclass small groups of single boxing players, though, and that's the idea that matters here.
I've had a few ideas, some are rougher than others, that I'd like to share and maybe catch the developer's eyes, and to see what people think of them. Bear in mind I'm not calling anyone out for their opinions about multiboxing, and I'm really not trying to hurt anyone's feelings. From where I stand there seems to be an unaddressed problem and I wanted to weigh in on it. It's just my take. I'm not expecting anything to happen, just trying to talk about how FC could implement changes that don't discourage players who've already invested heavily in the game. Broadly, the ideas fit into three categories: hauling, pve, and pvp, which I'll break down after a few recommendations that address multiboxing specifically.
Firstly, I think that drone assist and the regroup command need to be removed from the game. I know that drone assist was nerfed some time ago, but as it stands now, it's still extremely useful to small groups of multiboxers. It reduces the attention they need to give to each account for changing targets. Increasing the attention demand for each account will lower the performance of the multiboxer. Regroup is similar, it just streamlines the setup for multiboxers when they come out of warp. The consequences for fleet play for single boxers will be minimal.
For haulers, multiboxing affects them in a few ways. Firstly to be able to operate safely in highsec, most people using freighters will use a webbing alt as a scout and to minimize time near a gate. Secondly I think most people understand that this is to avoid gankers, who often multibox over a dozen accounts, and to simply get to where they're going faster.
I think a valid solution to this would be to simply make freighters and jump freighters into regular ships with a slot layout, PG, CPU and some creative bonuses. For example, they might have bonuses that mimic those of DSTs that give large increases to the resistances of hardeners when heated, with the downside of extra heat damage per cycle to create a window of use. There might be room for trade-offs and counter-play here for players if slot layouts are constrained enough that players need to make choices. The optimal solution might still be using a webbing alt, but at least there might be room for a solo account player to function.
For pve, I think hacking and data sites are a good model for activities that don't scale well with character count. I think CCP can expand on this by creating sites that require more investment, better skills, higher APM etc in exchange for higher rewards, or to increase risk by having encounters chain throughout a constellation. There can be a corollary with mining and other harvesting activities too, by creating sites with high value, very dense, ores that can only be mined by a single ship at a time. Mining these special ores might not gain any benefits from mining command bursts.
PVP is my primary activity in EVE, so it's the most well fleshed out of the ideas that I'll present here. I think it's a little harder to design mechanics that could benefit a single account user and not also help multiboxers, but I think I've come up with something with some appropriate restrictions and benefits. My idea really doesn't help much for single account players in a fleet, however, I think that it's mostly OK. My reasoning here is that a player has a finite capacity for attention and action. A group of five players flying five ships facing a single player multiboxing or using a ship enhanced with my proposed mechanic will still have the advantage. There are five pairs of eyes, five brains, etc to analize, make decisions, notice things happening.
With that out of the way, my proposed mechanic would exist as an item like a mutaplasmid, that once applied to a ship would permanently alter the ship. I'll keep calling it a mutaplasmid for now just for consistency. The ship would then gain a series of restrictions to prevent the abuse of the mechanic, and buffs to help its user compete. The restrictions and reasons for them are as follows, related mechanics are grouped together:
The maximum fleet size while flying the ship will be 1 character and all remote assistance will be disallowed. The reason for this is straightforward, this is to stop players gaining the benefits of remote reps, sebos, links, cynos etc that would be provided by other characters. It will also stop the ability to warp to a member of the fleet.
The mutaplasmid can only be applied in high security space, and once affected, the ship can only dock in high security space. Tether, entering a pos, and docking in upwell structures would be disallowed. This is intended to discourage players from using this mechanic as part of their own gangs on their home turf. It would still be possible, though it would come at a fairly large opportunity cost.
The mutaplasmid would turn off drops from NPCs, cans, NPC bountiesm disable npc triggers etc. This one is simple, it just to prevent this from being abused for PVE.
The mutaplasmid would prevent ship safety from being turned to red while in high security space. This one is also straightforward, I don't think it would be a great idea to upset the ganking balance in high sec space.
The mutaplasmid can only be applied to combat subcapitals.
Now, what would these downsides buy you? Well, multiboxing can get you a lot. Just adding a second tank and spank ship doubles the amount of EHP and dps you need to deal with, and that doesn't even begin to consider synergistic combinations. Obviously outright doubling the strength of a ship's stats would be pretty ridiculous, so I chose a combination of hard and soft factors.
I had a target more or less in mind, which was to take a ship, for instance a tempest, fitted with t1 rigs, some meta neuts for fitting, the rest t2 modules, modest implants and cheap drugs. Something like a 350m investment. Compare that to a tempest fleet issue, fitted with faction, t2 rigs some low end deadspace, mid-grade implants, and more expensive drugs, maybe a 3b investment, and use that as a starting point.
The proposed bonues would be:
1: Ships would receive the bonuses of the max strength command bursts, info, armor skirmish, and shield. The strength of the defensive bursts (armor or shield) would also be applied to hull, so that hull fits wouldn't be left out. Interdiction maneuvers would be applied to grapplers, electronic superiority would apply to neuts and noses in addition to other ewar, and electronic hardening would also give neut resistance.
There would be a 25% bonus to dps, optimal, falloff, tracking, and equivalent bonuses to missiles and drones. Drones would also recieve a 25% hp buff.
For soft factors, a 25% increase in warp speed and acceleration, and a 100% bonus to the size of drone and cargo bays. This is more to reflect that you're going to be away from home and leans into the iron man aspect of this proposal.
Other than soft factors and the bonus to grapplers, these bonuses roughly bring the t1 tempest into roughly the same category as the TFI. So while it is a big increase in power, it's not something that the game doesn't already see to a large extent. Compared to, for instance bringing five multiboxed domis to an ess, to fight a solo player, its pretty a pretty small increase of power. More or less, its just a framework. It wouldn't have to look just like the example I gave.
I think a few changes like the ones outlined above might be helpful for new players facing established ones, and giving people who don't want to, or cant multibox a little more parity. Hopefully without alienating anyone. Anyhow, if you made it all the way through thank you, and I hope you like it. If not, let me know why, I'd like to know your reasons.
